The Most Creative Storytellers for Startups

RPG JS: Browser Based Role Playing Games

One of my favorite hobbies is playing online flash games. These short goofy games are a fun way to spend hours of time on the web. Never mind the fact that you could have been doing something productive, it’s fun to play them. Some are five minute games, others might go on for days. They may be built by individuals or by full production teams. They come and go quickly with new ones coming out every day.

Lately I’ve been hearing murmurs about HTML5 and how it’s going to open the door to a new venue of interactive animations. Not too long ago this waterfall animation made its rounds on the web. Its purpose was to demonstrate what could be done with HTML5. We all oohed and awed at this newfound way of creating animations. The outstanding question remained though, could HTML5 along with JavaScript be utilized to create interactive games. I mean, could it make the kind of games that are currently built on the backbone of Adobe Flash? The answer is a resounding Yes, and that answer comes to us from RPG JS.

RPG JS is an open source JavaScript library that allows you create role playing games in HTML5. It’s a groundbreaking tool that is staged to be the forerunner in an entire new protocol for online game development. The way it works is developers can download the library, peruse the documentation and examples, and build their game. These demonstrate how to do such things as creating a simple RPG, load a map, add an event, and perform an action. These are the basic building blocks to many games, including role playing games.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun I fired up the demo game, for testing purposes only of course. This is an easy game where you press space to talk to people or open chests. Eventually you’ll find a weapon, defeat a few bad guys, solve a few puzzles, and rescue the princess. It only takes a few minutes to play through but proves the point- quality games can be built utilizing HTML5. Perhaps this demo game will be to HTML5 as Fly Guy was to flash. Sometimes it takes an iconic symbol to help a new technology to take hold.

RPG JS opens the doors to HTML5 role playing game development. It’s paving the way for the good things to come. It’s currently in alpha release and will undoubtedly go through multiple iterations of improvements and enhancements. Its framework will allow developers to start applying their creativity to HTML5 based games. This is great news for coders and gaming enthusiasts alike. Flash has had its day. It’s both memory and CPU intensive. The time has come for a new way to develop interactive animations online. HTML5 is poised to be the next big platform for online game development, and RPG JS is leading the charge.